


The Quiver and Cry of my Heart

by Electric_Apple



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-07
Updated: 2011-09-07
Packaged: 2017-10-23 12:29:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/250318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Electric_Apple/pseuds/Electric_Apple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And to hell with Steve and his stupid damn policy of always telling Sarah the truth, because now Danny has to sit here while Steve tells his four year old daughter he’s going to war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Quiver and Cry of my Heart

**Author's Note:**

> I had terrible trouble getting this to post correctly - it kept deleting paragraphs, for some reason. I had to delete it and start over, so apologies if you've seen this more than once.

It seems to come out of nowhere but it doesn’t, and later, when he looks back, Danny will see the inevitability of it.  Steve was good at whatever the fuck it was he did in the Navy, Danny _knows_ that, but it doesn’t stop the strange shortness of breath or the pounding in his ears when Steve rolls over to face him in bed and says softly that he’s being reactivated and deployed.  For a moment Danny is torn – pride, because this is a job Steve was born to do.  Jealousy – that Steve gets to go play with the big boys while Danny stays here to play housemaid.  Fear – mind-numbing, breathtaking fear because Steve and Sarah and Grace, they are _everything_ to him and that is now under threat.  Fuck the goddamn Navy, Danny thinks, even as he voices his okay, even as leans over to kiss Steve gently and say of course you need to go, of course.  Fuck the damn Navy for doing this to his family.

And fuck Steve and his stupid  fucking policy of always telling Sarah the truth, because now Danny has to sit here while Steve tells his four year old daughter he’s going to war.

Sarah takes it pretty well at first, mostly because she has no idea what it really means.  “Is it scary?” she asks curiously, and Steve tells her that yes, it is scary, but he knows what he’s doing and he’s going with a good team.   She starts to get upset when Steve explains it means he’ll be gone for a long time and loses her shit altogether when she realises that nine months is the equivalent of 36 Friday night dinners.  “That number’s too big!” she storms, and Danny’s heart aches for her.  Steve agrees gently that it is a big number but it can’t be helped.

She starts to have an inkling of what it will mean, then:  who is going to take her to school?  Who is going to make her breakfast?  Who will take her swimming?  Who is going to help her practise her letters?




She’s somewhat comforted when they assure her that Danny will be staying.  She makes him promise that he’ll still take her swimming every day and Danny does so without hesitation.  They have a long conversation about how most things won’t change: Danno will take her to school and help her with her letters, and Gracie will come over on the weekends and sometimes Rachel will watch her in the afternoons.  It will be hard and she’ll miss Daddy (and that’s okay), but they’ll get through it because Daddy has a job to do and they need to help him.  In fact, Daddy _needs_ them to do this so he can do his job. 

“I don’t like your job if it makes you go away,” Sarah says shakily and Steve ruffles her hair gently.  “I know, Sammie.  But it’s an important job, and I have to do it.”

Danny lifts her onto his knee .  “It’s an important job, kitten,” he repeats.  “The most important job.  Daddy is going to do this job and we’re going to help him anyway we can. You and me, Sammie, we’re going to brave like Daddy – brave like soldiers, okay?”

She nods in agreement.  “Brave like soldiers.”  He hugs her and sends her upstairs to brush her teeth.

As soon as she’s out of earshot, Steve kicks him – hard – in the shin.  “ _Navy_ , Danny.  How many times to I have to tell you?  It’s the goddamn _Navy_.”

 

They have three days before Steve has to leave.  In the interests of keeping things as normal as they can, Sarah goes to pre-school as planned for the first two days.  Danny is neck-deep in a case at work and Steve has briefings to attend and kit to collect from the base.  He knocks off in time to get Sarah from school both days, though.  The first night, they have their usual family dinner at the kitchen table.  Danny declares the second night an honorary Friday, so they order pizza and eat it in the backyard, Steve and Danny share a six pack and Sarah splashes in the water til it’s dark and time for the movie.  Then they curl up on the couch together, a tangle of Steve’s long limbs and Sarah’s wet hair and Danny’s broad shoulders, and watch the latest Pixar release. 

Sarah’s not used to staying up late on a school night and she fades out over the course of the movie til she can no longer keep her eyes open and falls asleep with her head in Steve’s lap.  Steve and Danny watch the rest of the movie in silence, Steve’s fingers smoothing Sarah’s dark hair over and over again.

Then it’s Wednesday, the last day, and they don’t send Sarah to school.  Instead, they pack a picnic lunch and take her down to the surf beach, where Steve tries to teach Sarah to balance on a body board and Danny bitches about the sand in his shorts.  He lets Sarah rub the sunscreen onto his back, which is a fairly epic mistake because she misses large sections of skin that burn bright red after several hours in the sun.   They throw the football around and then substitute Sarah for the ball, tossing her between them and running with her tucked under one arm for pretend touch downs.  She squeals and laughs and Danny watches Steve watch his daughter with a hunger and intensity he’s never seen before.  He knows Steve is cataloguing this day, his family, _in case,_ and Danny can barely swallow back the terror that rises in his throat at the thought that this may be – but no.  _No_. 

There’s a barbeque at their place that night – Chin, Kono and Charlie, Grace.  Their colleagues and friends;  their family.   Sarah, exhausted from her day at the beach, once again falls asleep in Steve’s lap and once again he makes no effort to move her, though multiple people offer to take her off to bed.  Instead, he sits quietly in his chair, Sarah’s head on his shoulder, as the party moves around them. 

It’s week night and people have places to be early the next morning so things start wrapping up about 9pm.  People leave with a clap on the back or a handshake and a wish for good luck and a safe return.  Steve returns the gestures as best he can with Sarah in his arms; thanks everyone and assures them he’ll be back in one piece just as soon as he can.  Kono promises not to let Sarah anywhere near a board before he’s home.  Chin, in that quiet, assured way of his, promises to look out for Danny at work.

Danny thumps his partner, hard, in the upper arm.  “Not a child, Steven.  Don’t need a babysitter.”  But the words are missing his usual heat.

Grace kisses Steve; he hugs her tightly, one-armed, and kisses the top of her head.  “I love you, Steve.  See you in a while,” Gracie whispers, voice cracking, and you’d have to know Steve well to hear the slight tremor in his voice when he replies “You bet, Monkey.  I love you too.”  She gives him one last squeeze before disappearing inside, where Rachel is waiting for her.

And then somehow it’s Thursday morning and it’s time for Steve to go.  Sarah, only half awake and still in her pjs with her hair tangled in a dark cloud around her head, hugs him and kisses him and asks him if he _really_ has to go.  “I really have to go, baby,” he murmurs, hugging her again and then releasing her to stand up.  She starts to cry then – predictably – and if Danny had any preconceived romantic notion about sending his lover off to war, it’s shattered by the reality of a brief, hard kiss shared over the head of a howling four year old who is clinging to their legs and begging Steve to _please Daddy, please Daddy don’t go_. 

 

That first week is seven of the hardest days of Danny’s life.  “Is Daddy home yet?” are the first words out of Sarah’s mouth every morning; “When is Daddy coming home?” her last words every night.  She asks about Steve constantly – when they go to the store, when he picks her up from pre-school, while she’s swimming, when she’s having her bath.  More than once, Danny catches her searching the house methodically in case Danny’s not really telling her the truth and Steve is merely hiding out in the spare room.

“But it’s _been_ a long time!” she protests, every time Danny tells her that Daddy won’t be home for a long time yet.  Finally, Gracie brings over a calendar and shows Sarah how to put a big purple cross through each day just before she goes to bed.  When the crosses get to September, Grace explains, Daddy will be home.  It becomes an integral part of their night-time routine, after reading a story and before Sarah blows her kiss towards her window.  “What’s that you’re doing, babe?” Danny asks, the first time he sees her do it.  “Giving a kiss to Daddy,” she says simply and Danny’s heart aches a little at her earnest little face.  Damn if he doesn’t start doing it with her every night, too. 

 

Unsurprisingly, email is their primary form of contact.  Sarah doesn’t yet have the spelling skills to match her vocabulary so Danny painstakingly transcribes her ‘letters to Daddy’ word for word, resisting the urge to clarify or embellish even when sorely tempted.  Sarah’s version?  _To Daddy.  Today I went for a swim.  The water was warm.  Danno helped me turn a somersault under the water.  I like reading at school.  I want pigtails tomorrow.   Love from Sarah._

She leaves out the part where she managed to kick Danny – twice – during the attempted somersault, once in the chin and once missing his balls by a scant few millimetres.  Danny makes sure to include this pertinent information in his own email, along with a few references to the impact on Steve’s sex life should his daughter damage the goods in his absence. 

Steve emails when he can.  Sometimes they get an email every day for a week.  Other times they can go weeks without hearing from him.  Danny finds those weeks the hardest – knowing that Steve is more than likely in the midst of something deadly.  That first email after an extend period of silence never fails to stop Danny’s heart in his chest.   Steve makes a point to answer all Sarah’s emails, though circumstances usually require him to combine several replies into a single email, and Sarah has Danny read them aloud repeatedly til they can both pretty much recite them from heart.  Sometimes she asks him to print them out and she carries them around the house for days afterwards, reading them every chance she gets.  Danny figures that if nothing else, this deployment is certainly helping Sarah practise her words

Not that Danny’s adverse to printing out the odd email, though – emails intended for Danny only, in which Steve turns an eloquent turn of phrase completely at odds with his public persona.   After the third one, when Danny spends an entire night tossing and turning and too turned on to sleep, he expresses his opinion that Steve is clearly trying to kill him in his absence.  He gets a one sentence email in return: _just wait til you see what I do when I get home_.  Danny deletes the email thread with a grin that doesn’t leave his face for three days. 

 

They’re sitting at the kitchen table, eating the few remaining cookies from a baking spree Grace went on earlier in the day.

“Danno, Daddy likes cookies,” Sarah says around a mouthful.  “We need to save him some.”

“We can’t save them, babe, they’ll go off.”  He chews his own cookie slowly.  “We might be able to send him some, though.  What do you say, Sammie – should we go to the market and buy Dad some cookies?”

“Yeah!”  Sarah jumps up immediately, her glass of milk forgotten.  “Let’s go, Danno!”

Which is how Danny finds himself walking the aisles at Costco, putting together a care package like he’s some kind of goddamn Army wife.  They find Steve’s favourite cookies and Sarah puts six cartoons into the trolley before he realises what she’s doing; after a bit of negotiation, she agrees that two will be enough for now if they send him some more in a few weeks.  Danny throws in a couple of packets of Steve’s favourite powdered sports drink.  They find him a new toothbrush and he lets Sarah choose the pinkest, most disgusting flavoured toothpaste she can find .  He adds a few tubes of Steve’s usual stuff, though, because he’s not a complete bastard. 

Together, they choose a couple of magazines and Danny adds Tom Clancy’s latest book, just for laughs.  Danny grabs a few of Steve’s beloved razors – Steve’s complaints about Navy-issue razors feature prominently in the few stories of previous deployments he’s been able to share with Danny.

Sarah wants to mail the parcel then and there but when he suggests she might like to go home first and choose a couple of her recent pictures to include, her whole face lights up.  “Really, Danno, can I?”

“Of course you can, babe.  What do you think, should we ask Gracie if she wants to put in something too?”

“Yeah!”

Sarah quickly decides that her previous pictures are not good enough so as soon as they get home she settles herself at the kitchen table with her crayons and pencils and sets out to produce some new ones.  Danny calls Grace to explain what they’re doing and while she’s a little bit less enthusiastic about including a handwritten letter (“Geez Dad, I send him emails”) she does suggest printing out a few photos.  It’s a good idea; Danny downloads the latest bunch from his phone and prints off a dozen shots of Sarah at the beach, eating her table, playing with her toys, coloring, asleep in her bed.  After a bit of deliberation, he also prints of the shot Gracie caught the last time she was here: Sarah curled up in the circle of Danny’s arms, head bowed in concentration as she sounds out the words on the page of the book she’s holding. 

By the end of the afternoon, they have the parcel ready to go.  Danny takes Sarah with him when he goes down to the base to post it, a move he regrets bitterly when the clerk mentions in an off-hand kind of way that he can’t guarantee it will reach him.

“But Daddy needs it,” Sarah tells him, lower lip trembling.  And seriously, Danny could punch the kid because that look on Sarah’s face, that’s a look he _hates_ seeing.

“Daddy will get it,” he assures her – and he continues to assure her for the next three weeks, at which point they receive an email from Steve thanking Sarah for the pictures and the cookies and asking if they can send him a few rolls of electrical tape, a box of AA batteries, a couple of SD cards and some talc.  Danny has no idea why the last one is required; he manages to constrain his curiosity and not ask. 

 

Strangely, there are some good things about having Steve gone.  He can leave the toilet seat up in the ensuite, for one (Steve, too damn Navy for his own good, insists on the seat being down at all times when not in use).  He can cycle through the two towels in the bathroom, using one on each alternate day.  He can watch basketball in relative peace.  They eat more steak for dinner.  He chooses a tie each day without colourful commentary.  He can listen to Bon Jovi for as long and as often as he likes – and man, he can’t _wait_ for Steve to see Sarah give her rendition of ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’. 

None of this is enough to make up for Steve’s absence, of course.  But eases the passage of time, if only a little.

 

Sarah comes down the steps at school one afternoon utterly miserable.   “What is it, babe?” Danny asks worriedly, bending down to scoop her into his arms, but she won’t tell him and he can’t get it out of her during the drive home either.  She goes straight upstairs to her room and Danny leaves her be for an hour, figuring she’ll come around.  She doesn’t answer when he calls her down for dinner, though, so he goes upstairs to find her curled up into a small ball on her bed, Bear in one arm and a thumb in her mouth.

She’s been crying; her eyes are red and swollen.




Danny sits down beside her; runs what he hopes is a soothing hand down her back.  “Hey, Kitten.  You want to tell me what’s wrong?”

She shakes her head.

“Is it something I can help you with?”

She shakes her head again.  They sit in silence for a few minutes, Danny stroking her back gently, til Sarah blurts out suddenly “Is Daddy going to die?”

“Is Daddy going to die?”  Danny repeats, dumb-founded.  “Is Daddy going to – no, babe.  _No_.  What makes you ask that?”

“Charlotte’s uncle Tim was in that place and he died and Charlotte had to go on a plane and they put her uncle Tim in a box in the ground because he died.”  It comes spilling out of Sarah in a rush of words Danny struggle to understand.  “Charlotte’s mom and grandpa were crying and Charlotte is really sad.  Charlotte says people who go to that place die.”

 Oh, man.

“Babe, do you remember what we talked about before Daddy left?”

Sarah nods. “ He’s going to do an important job.”

“That’s right.  And it’s a dangerous job, but Daddy has been trained to do it, and he’s very, _very_ good at it.  In fact, I bet there’s nobody better at doing this job.”

Sarah rolls over to face him.  “So he’s not going to die?”

And fuck fuck _fuck_.  This is not a conversation Danny knows how to have.  He takes a deep breath before answering.  “I don’t know, Kitten.  Being a solider is a dangerous job and sometimes soldiers like Charlotte’s Uncle Tim die, which is really, really sad.  And they were good at their jobs, just like Daddy is.  So you and me, we have to trust Daddy to do his job and we have to hope and pray and _believe_ that Daddy will come home.”

Sarah crawls into his lap.  “I don’t want them to put Daddy in a box, Danno,” she whispers. 

“Oh, babe.”  Danny holds her tightly and rocks her in his arms, but he doesn’t answer because he has no idea what to say. 

 

Some days, Danny feels like he’s got it all under control.  Some days, he and Sarah have time for a full breakfast and she dresses for school without being prompted and she gives him a kiss and a hug goodbye after he’s walked her to her classroom door.  He’s too busy to open the internet browser and the tv in the corner of his office stays off.  He gets in a run at lunchtime.  He finishes work early enough to pick Sarah up from school and cook her a decent dinner and they go for a swim or read a book or paint pictures on the back steps before it’s time for her bath.  He reads her a goodnight story and tucks her into bed and she sleeps through with no nightmares.

On a good day, there’s an email from Steve in his inbox.  On a really good day, there’s more than one.

Some days, though, he doesn’t feel like he’s in control at all.  He sleeps in and Sarah is cranky and petulant when he tries to get her dressed.  There’s no time for breakfast so he shoves a pop-tart in her hand (breaking about twenty of Steve’s dietary rules in one go) as he hustles her out the door and into the car.  He forgets Sarah’s hat and she refuses to hold his hand as they cross the road from the car park to the school.  He gets caught up with work and has to call Rachel to pick up Sarah, who is quiet and withdrawn if she’s still awake when he finally gets home.

Some days – the dark days which seem to last forever –  he can’t shake the nagging feeling that Steve is doing something more dangerous or stupid than usual and CNN plays in the background and he refreshes the news page on his browser every few minutes and he can barely stomach food because he’s _sick_ with fear and guilt and rage at not being there with him, at being stuck at home, impotent and useless, at not having Steve’s back when he needs it most.

 _You do have my back,_ Steve tells him during one 2.30am phone call, when the night is dark enough and Danny is tired and scared enough to confess this.  _You’ve got my girl, Danny.  I couldn’t do this if I didn’t know she was safe with you._   And Danny huffs and asks when he became the fucking _wife_ in the relationship and Steve laughs and says he always has been, but the relief is overwhelming and carries him through to the next dark day.

 

Sarah falls from the monkey bars at school and skins her knee.  It’s bad enough for the school to call Danny, and bad enough that Danny takes one look at it and calls in to take the rest of the afternoon off.  He gets her home, carries her inside and sits her on the kitchen table, then doses her with Tylenol before pulling out the antiseptic and gauze.  “This is going to hurt a bit, babe,” he warns her.  Though he cleans out the wound as gently as he can and Sarah tries to be stoic, she’s only four and she’s a sobbing, hiccupping mess before he’s done.  Afterwards, he bandages her knee and she crawls into his lap for cuddles and comfort.  “You’re such a brave girl,” he tells her, kissing her forehead and her cheek and rubbing her back.  “I’m so proud.”

“I don’t want to brave,” she says – softly, and so sadly it breaks his heart.  “I just want my Daddy.”

He hugs her to him.  “I know, babe.  I know.”  And he hates that he doesn’t have anything more to give her beyond the acknowledgement that he knows just how she feels. 

 

It surprises Danny, when he stops to think about it – which he doesn’t, because it’s like a kick in the gut each time – to find that through it all, life somehow moves on.  Gracie makes the honor roll at school.  Danny has the car serviced.  Sarah and Grace combine forces to make a bright purple cake for Danny’s birthday.  Sarah loses her first tooth (which is to say it’s loose for approximately three days before she manages to wriggle it free with her tongue: “It’s better out than in, Danno,” she informs him, and sounds so much like her father he can’t help his snort of laughter).  Danny mows the lawn.  He takes Sarah swimming every afternoon.  He does the groceries and the laundry and the housework.  He goes to work.  He comes home again.

Sometimes, he can’t help the nagging feeling that it’s always been like this and it _will_ always be like this – just Danny and Sarah (with Grace on the weekends), alone in the house which is paradoxically too big without Steve but just right for the two (or three) of them.  Where for the first few months the whole island seemed to be full of places Steve should have been but wasn’t, now Danny finds himself wondering if Steve had ever sat at the kitchen table with them for dinner – swam with Sarah – did the groceries – painted the lounge room – slept in the other half of the bed, warm and solid against Danny’s back.

Which is stupid, of course, because he knows logically that Steve _was_ here and did each of those things.  He _knows_ it.  He just can’t shake the feeling that this is all he’s ever known. 

And he’s tired – bone deep, to the core _tired_.  Sarah is his daughter in every way that matters, as dear to him as Gracie and as loved.  But he’s tired of fighting with her over brushing her hair after her bath, of dealing with her rare but epic meltdowns, of having to find her wet towel and hang it up every damn day.  She’s a good girl, a great kid, and he loves her with everything he has and he hates himself for feeling this way, but he signed up for co-parenting and sometimes his current situation feels more like a burden than a blessing. 

He never admits this to Steve.  He never really admits it to himself, either. 

 

And then – finally, finally – they get the news they’ve been waiting for: confirmation, in the form of a written email, of Steve’s return date.  Sarah runs up stairs and thunders back down a few moments later, shouting ecstatically that “it’s only _fifteen days_ , Danno!”. 

It’s may be fifteen days on the calendar; it feels like fifty.  Sarah gets progressively more excited with each passing day, til Danny has to all but sit on her to get her into bed at night.  He and the girls clean the house from top to bottom and Danny catches up on all the laundry.  They go to the market and return laden with bags of Steve’s favourite foods.  Danny makes sure there’s a fresh bottle of Steve’s shampoo in the shower, a new can of shaving cream by the sink.  He changes the sheets on the bed. 

He even gets a hair cut, hoping no one will notice, but of course Kono does and she teases him about it, gently enough that she manages to get a laugh out of him.

Rachel is convinced Sarah needs new clothes to welcome her father home.  Danny protests that her usual denim cutoffs and t-shirts will be just fine but Rachel is eager to do it and Danny caves, sending Rachel, Grace and Sarah off with Danny’s credit card, which he knows damn well Rachel won’t use.  They return a few hours later with armfuls of bags.  Rachel’s taken the opportunity to have Sarah’s hair cut (something Danny’s been meaning to do for a while) and she looks so _grown up_ in her short, dark bob and new outfit that Danny wonders momentarily if Steve is going to recognise her. 

“I look pretty, Danno!” she cries, spinning around on the spot so her skirt twirls around her.  Danny laughs and agrees then sobers a little, because they still have four days to go – four days during which his heart will give that familiar, painful little leap each time an unrecognised number flashes up on the screen of his phone; four days during which his breath will catch with each time a car he doesn’t know slows down outside the house.

 

Steve’s coming in on a civilian flight, so they drive out to meet him at the airport.

Sarah skips eagerly beside Danny as they walk in from the car; holds his hand and hops up and down impatiently as they join the small crowd of people awaiting the plane’s arrival.  “Is he here yet?  Can you see him, Danno?  Is he here?”

“Not yet, babe,” he says, over and over, til finally he lifts her up onto his shoulders so that she can see over the heads in front of her.  The arrivals door swings open and Sarah gasps, her hands tightening involuntarily in Danny’s hair .  He grunts in response and reaches up to untangle her fingers. He can tell the instant she spots Steve; she tenses, little body quivering, and damn if he doesn’t know exactly how she feels.    He raises his hand to signal Steve over – Steve, whose face fucking _lights up_ when he sees them and damn if Danny doesn’t know how that feels, too, because he can feel his own grin break out in response.

Steve is alive, Steve is here, Steve is safe.

He sets Sarah down, expecting her to make a bolt for her father – but she doesn’t, shying close to Danny instead, one arm worming uncertainly around his leg. 

Steve stops about a foot way, clearly thrown by his daughter’s reaction. 

Danny prods her forward – gently, gently.  “Hey, babe.  You gonna say hi to your dad?”

She nods, but doesn’t take more than half a step. 

Steve squats down so he’s eye-level with the little girl.  “Hey, Sammie.”

The nickname seems to settle her a little.  She lets go of Danny’s leg and approaches Steve cautiously.  “I got my hair cut,” she tells him.

“I can see that.  It looks great.” 

“Will you take me swimming today?”

“Of course,” Steve says. 

Danny’s not at all sure what spurned her on, but Sarah launches herself at Steve with a suddenness that would have taken anyone else completely off guard.  Steve, though – Steve catches his baby girl easily and he closes his eyes as Sarah’s skinny little arms wrap themselves tightly around his neck.  “I _missed_ you, Daddy,” she whispers.  She’s crying, just a little, and Steve holds her tightly to him, his cheek against the dark cloud of her hair.  “I missed you too, baby, so much,” he whispers back.

In a few minutes, there’ll be time for Danny – for the quick, hard kiss so reminiscent of their parting, for the hug hard enough to knock the breath out of both of them.  There’ll be words and exchanges and Steve asking for the car keys even though he’s just come off an 18 hour overseas flight.  There’ll be longer kisses out by the car, Danny running his hands over Steve’s back, his arms, his chest, to make sure that he’s really all here, really all safe.  There’ll be whispered words and quiet assurances, promises and plans. 

And Danny’s happy to wait for that, he is, because Sarah in Steve’s arms marks the reunion of his family; the completion.

For the first time in nine months, Danny lets out the breath he didn’t know he was holding.   

 

 


End file.
